Wednesday, July 3, 2013

1954 Cadillac Park Avenue

Cadillac Park Avenue, 1954

Cadillac Park Avenue, a special 4-dr. pillarless HT sedan (special order
# 1930) in the Orleans vein; built on the 133" wheelbase chassis of the
60 Special it had a fiberglass body and was presented at the 1954 GM
Motorama at the Waldorf Astoria, starting January 26, 1954.

Cadillac Park Avenue, 1954

Just as the crowds had thronged to view the Cadillac Le Mans roadster at the 1953 GM Motorama, they crowded again around La Espada and El Camino in 1954. Nevertheless, the buying public paid much closer attention to Cadillac’s experimental 4-door hard-top models [the Orleans, in 1953, and the Park Avenue,
in 1954. Noticeable was the return to dual instead of quad headlights
on the Park Avenue. Quads were still illegal in many states until 1958.
The tail-fins on the Park Avenue are copied directly from GM’s 1951 Le Sabre
experimental roadster; the windshield, front bumper, wheels are all
carried over from previous Motorama models and seem to be traditional of
GM show-car styling; the brushed aluminum roof and rear roof saddle
appeared again the following year on the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham prototype.
The Park Avenue sedan had the same exhaust ports and seven vertical
louvers acting as the car’s rear, as used earlier on Le Mans, La Espada
and El Camino. The vertical louvers appeared as a design feature on the
rear of all Cadillac models in 1955. The dummy air-scoop on the rear
door reappeared on the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham town car prototype in 1956.